Peru: Keeping the pace

Jan 1, 2013

Interview with Peruvian finance minister Luis Miguel Castilla

LF: Peru’s recent growth story
has been impressive. What’s needed to sustain it?

Castilla: Growth is sustainable, but the
automatic pilot will not work any longer. We were helped out by
very favorable winds outside our country, with very favorable
terms of trade and commodity prices at historic peaks. Given
that the world is most likely going to go into a phase of
slower growth, we need to undertake a series of reforms to be
able to sustain growth. I would place them in four
categories.

The first is to improve our productivity, our
competitiveness. Our economy has opened up and we have pursued
integrating into the world economy, both trade-wise and in
terms of the capital account. This obviously entails boosting
our productivity, our competitiveness, closing the
infrastructure gap, upgrading the skills of our labor force
and, in general, sustaining an environment where human
capital...